Moray Callum appointed Ford design chief

1. That is wrong - the X Type was not remotely successful. It was a disaster for Jaguar and Ford and one which they did not repeat. It took Jaguar down-market and it lost Ford billions. This was because J Mays forced Geoff Lawson and Ian Callum to accept a shrunken retro design with cheap detailing. A design which they did not want - a fact recently confirmed by the company. Component sharing was never the issue; Jaguar design has never looked better since they've been free of his interference. 2. Thunderbird may have been dormant but Ford had big plans for the 2002 version; it was meant to be a medium volume model and they even thought of bringing it to Europe. Sales of the 2002 TBird tapered to nothing, very quickly. Suffice to say, it won't be coming back now. This is because Mays copied the blobby style of the 1989 Nissan 300ZX/1997 VW Beetle and applied some retro to it. Wholly inappropriate to the trad values of the TBird's sector. Ironically, when Mays did apply his retroism it was in places (Jaguar) where buyers did not want it. 3. That is plain wrong, PAG was bleeding money by 2004 (with the possible exception of Volvo, funnily enough the brand farthest away from Mays) and the reason why is not hard to fathom - the designs were poor and not enough people bought the cars. Mays in no way established Jaguar as a premium player under his tenure. As to Aston, Ford purchased that a whole decade before J Mays showed up. So then, PAG, post J Mays: Volvo is Chinese, Jag/LR is Indian and Aston belongs to the Arabs. Lincoln is as directionless as ever and Ford's sales are not radically improved. Mays had, at least in the form of PAG, gilt-edged brands to work with. And he couldn't do it.